SAINT DAMIEN JOSEPH DE VEUSTER OF MOLOKA’I (1840-1889)
May 10
	In the mid-1990s, a heavily bearded, bespectacled Robin Williams appeared on Late Night with David Letterman, whose host was clearly taken aback. Letterman inquired as to why the wild look. Uncharacteristically subdued, the usually manic comic responded that he was producing and starring in a movie about a most extraordinarily compassionate man, Damien, the Leper Priest of Moloka’i. 
	Some saints transcend religious and ethnic boundaries to touch the heart that beats in each human being: Francis of Assisi; Mother Teresa; and, though Williams’ film was never completed, his admiration speaks, as does Damien’s statue outside the capitol in Honolulu, of this newest saint’s universal appeal. Far from his native Flanders’ idyllic beauty and rich culture, Damien volunteered to bear Christ’s light into Moloka’i’s bleak leper colony, building decent homes, opening schools, establishing clinics, planting farms, sharing the sufferings—and the social stigma—of those with whom he delighted to identify: “We lepers,” he would proudly say when finally he contracted leprosy. Saint Damien challenges us to identify the lepers of our own day, to examine our compassion for and our identification with them. 
—Peter Scagnelli